Anchoring

Anchoring

Anchoring as defined by good ol’ wikipedia is a cognitive bias that describes the human need to rely very heavily on the first chunk of information offered “the anchor” when making a decision.

What does that exactly mean?

If I were to tell you that the amazon river is 2,534 miles long than proceed to ask you how long the mississippi river is you’d probably guess a much larger number than if I told you the amazon river was 700 miles long.

I don’t know how long the amazon river is, and I don’t care. Your mind is built on cognitive biases in order to function correctly. This sales tactic exploits one of the major cognitive biases named the “Anchoring and Adjustment Hypothesis”.

How to Use Anchoring in Sales

The use is easy when you practice. The key is practicing it. Like I talked about briefly in the foundation – everything is based on sales. You can see that in my contact page I told you to make a catchy headline because that’s half the battle when it comes to email marketing. We can talk about email marketing in a later post. Enough of my babble… Let’s get right into it!

When discussing prices make sure to first tell your prospect a big number so that your actual number seems much lower. To give a quick example if you were selling a car you’d first show the prospective buyer prices way out of their range. Everything shown to the prospect after that first Rolls Royce will seem inexpensive in comparison.

Try it out for yourself! Even just give it a shot on your wife when you get home.

Say “babe, Mike’s heating bill was $750 last month, ours is only $300… isn’t that great?”.

You will likely get a pleasant reaction.

The next week say “babe, Sherry’s heating bill was $150, and ours was $300… isn’t that great?”